Guardian in Wonderland
by Heaven Canceler
Summary: Archer died without telling his story, but what if someone decides that if he has to leave this stage he should find himself on a new one? Bad for him that this person likes to play with his life a bit to much... On Halt until further notice!
1. Arrival

Here is the disclaimer, I don't own anything here except the general plot of the story and maybe an OC or two, I may throw in for spice at some point if I feel like it.

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><p>Kischur Zelretch Schweinorg, one of the most powerful beings in existence, a Dead Apostle and sorcerer who has mastered the second magic, which is essentially the operation of parallel worlds. Thanks to this ability he can do incredible things and earned many titles and names like Wizard Marshall, Kaleidoscope and Zelretch of the Jewels. And at the moment he was utterly bored, now you should now one thing, nothing is more dangerous than, when a person is bored, that has enough power to do virtually whatever the hell he wants. This is especially the case, if it is someone who can access an infinite number of minds from parallel universes. And he is doing all of this just to get his hand on new ideas for his ridiculous deeds. Now you should know another thing, if you are almost omnipotent, you sooner or later start to develop some unusual characteristics; the Wizard Marshall himself had a number of such. One particular was that he had started to manipulate the lives of a couple of the more unpredictable persons he could find in the different dimensions, for example sending them on a paper chase for some kind of legendary object, to talk about one of the less crazy ones.<p>

We could stay here and count a number of his weirdest adventured and misdeeds, but I don't think that would be interesting for any of you. So let us go on with the story, at the moment the master of the second magic had found a new vict… ah I mean interesting person for one of his experiments. (You should always be careful what you say, you never know if he or a parallel version of him can hear you) To be precise, he is not really a new test person, but just a different version, of others that have already tasted the, let us just say unusual sense of humor, Zelretch had. It was a man or boy depending on the dimension with the name Shirou Emiya, and he had the habit of becoming an important figure in whichever world he existed. His destiny of becoming a tragic hero of justice was an almost terrifying constant trough the myriads of possible earths. The vampire himself thought that it was incredibly funny to take different versions of him and throw them in more and more ridiculous situations. To say that they were not happy about that was a severe understatement, at least that counted for these who found out who was responsible for there fate.

That certain Emiya Shirou was special not because he was a counter-guardian, also not because of his unusual ability to copy magical weapons. It was because he was the only one who did not lose the memories of his past even after going through something worse then hell. Zelretch knew that mainly because he was spying on him with his abilities since he had seen him first, at the moment it looked like he had to decide fast what he should do.

"Hmmm… it seems like you are dying." The old man said while looking in no special direction. But no, he wouldn't let this new chance for fun flee from him, after all the manipulation of something like the Holy Grail was nothing special to him. All he had to do was to put an equivalent amount of energy to the person he wanted to take in the little thing and it would not give him any trouble.

A couple of ideas were already forming in his head, the possibilities of this opportunity were countless and of course he would have to give the boy a few hints. Not anything too big, or maybe he should… oh let us hold that for the future, seems like a good idea.

Few seconds later a sound like from a bell could be heard and a voice said that this was the last station for the train. You could see a smile on the face of the old man that stood a bit away from the rest of the people while the train was slowly emptying. Nobody seemed to think much of the fact that he seemed to slowly disappear, if anyone had observed him closely enough, they may have heard him saying a couple of words before finally vanishing.

"Oh! Where should I send you boy? So many choices, so little time."

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><p>The first thing he noticed was that he could move his body, although such a thing wouldn't be anything special to most people, for him it was very, very unexpected. He was also feeling like he had run headfirst in a solid brick wall.<p>

The young man began to slowly get into a sitting position, until now he had been lying on a…

"What the hell?" The word left his mouth as he tried to hold his balance while the ground under him was shaking for some unknown reason. That by the way, did not any good to the headache our protagonist was now developing while he tried to gather his thoughts.

His arms shot out and held onto the first things they could reach, he absently noted that they were made of wood, whatever the first thing he had to clear was. "What happened to me?"

At this moment his memory decided to make a kick-start and pictures began to shot trough his head.

_A voice called him; yes that was the first thing he could really remember_

"_I hereby propose._

_Thou shall come under my command,_

_and thy sword shall control my fate._

_Abiding by the summons of the Holy Grail,_

_if thou dost accede to this will and reason, answer me._

_I make my oath here_

_I am that person who is to become the virtue of all Heavens. _

_I am that person who is covered with the evil of all Hades._

_Thou seven heavens, clad in a trinity of words, _

_Come forth from the circle of constraint._

_Protector of the Balance!"_

_Then a crash and a girl with raven coloured hair._

_A fight with a man in blue wielding a spear the colour of spilled blood._

_A few skirmishes with different opponents._

_Talking with others:_

_The silver clad knight with hair like moonlight._

_The child with a distorted heart and unbreakable will._

_The small girl, she holds with her hand a beast without any fear._

_And the beast…_

_A battle, he could see it, relentless hitting the opponent with everything, looking for openings, but the giant beast didn't die, or better said, he didn't stay dead for long. Every attack was a bit slower then the last, burning magical energy to strengthen his body and speed his movements, a slash to the shoulder, a hit to the liver, attacking and attacking, ignoring the looks of the small girl ordering his foe._

_And then death…_

"Why am I here?" His words were not meant for a certain person, but more for a certain power or existence, something he called "My Jailer" in his more sarcastic moments.

He looked around and finally noticed where exactly he was sitting, for some reason he was on a boat, it was not very big and held just enough room for him and maybe one or two more persons.

"Good, at least I am not in trouble right now." He didn't know at the moment, but this words would later come back to bite him in the ass… hard.

Shortly after speaking he went on with finding out more about his current situation, first he was thinking that something was very weird. He could move freely, something he hadn't really expected after being summoned to anything except the grail war. Of course there were times when someone found a way to summon a being like him, but than he would have seen that person already.

After making himself comfortable in the wooden seat of the boat he began to search for anything around him that wasn't water. Out of habit he immediately reinforced his eyes, and thanks to that it was not very hard to find out that he was on a river. Both shores could be reached easily if he was right, the one nearer to him looked like a giant flower field, it seemed a fitting place for him to think and maybe search for someone that could explain to him what was going on.

He was about to jump, sure that this would be much faster then boating there, when something stopped him, it was a very unique feeling, like a little voice saying that this would be a bad idea, the really weird thing was that it seemed… familiar if he had to name it.

This man had gone trough many battles and one lesson he had learned there was to trust his instinct, especially if they said something that made no sense. Slowly glancing across the river he began to use one of his few magical skills.

Structural Grasping

It was a technique that was used to identify the composition and basic abilities of an object, normally a magus wouldn't be in able to find out more then the components something was made of and it would take either extreme knowledge of these materials or experiments to find out how exactly something worked and what it could do, also more complicated and powerful objects were often much harder to understand this way.

For him that was not the case, he was rather useless at the most types of magecraft, but he excelled for example at this style to a level that he could, with enough time of course, even understand objects on the level of divine mysteries.

"Okay it doesn't seem to be poisoned or in any way harmful so why did I have the feeling that… what the hell?"

The words left his

mouth with an audible amount of surprise, the water was indeed not in any way harming, but it had a rather unpleasant trait. From what he could understand it neutralized any kind buoyancy and he was sure that whoever was to try to swim trough this river would sink like a stone. After a moment he repeated the process on his vehicle and discovered that it had the ability to neutralize the neutralization of the… oh whatever, it could swim even tough anything else would sink, satisfied?

He was pretty sure that the water didn't have any additional abilities but he wouldn't bet his health onto that. So he decided that he would use the boat, luckily there was a rudder inside, it was pretty long and somehow reminded him of the kind he had once seen in Venice. For a short amount of time he wondered if someone missed a boat right now… whatever he could give it back when the time came, at the moment he had surely more need for it then anyone else.

He decided that his first destination would be the shore that was nearer to him and so began to silently paddle in that direction. After a short time the work became easy, he had to do such things before and it wasn't really anything complicated.

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><p>Her name was Medicine Melancholy, she was not a human and to be accurate she couldn't even be called alive from a scientific point of view. Not to say that she couldn't die or anything like this, just not in the same ways a human could. Melancholy had originally been nothing more than a doll, a toy for children, but she had been abandoned at some point in the past. You see there is an old legend that says if you take good care of an item, no matter the type; it will develop a consciousness. Melancholy was never damaged the main reason for this was that she had been abandoned in a field full o poisonous flowers.<p>

So she was taken care of even tough she had been left alone by humans, and while a normal Tsukumogami would have good feelings for humans after they used them for so long, her opinion of them was rather bad. To further the problem she had never gotten a ceremony to show the respect of the humans to the lost or destroyed item that she had been. A pretty stupid thing, especially if you consider that, after more then a hundred years of existence inside of a toxic field, she herself had developed the unusual ability to create and manipulate poison of more or less any kind. Even to touch her was dangerous but she herself was safe of course, after all her body wasn't organic at all.

By the way, at this moment she was sitting silently on the ground waiting for someone to come, the person she was waiting for was named Shikieiki Yamaxanadu, the later is a title while Shiki is her surname and Eiki her given name. However it didn't seem like she would come soon, which in itself was not that bad you see Melancholy wasn't here because she wanted to. It was more something on the line of a punishment, however the person who wanted to punish her had quite obviously not enough time to do that and told her to sit in the flower field until she found the time to give her a lecture.

"Oh I am so bored!" She was flying a few centimetres above the ground an ability that was very basic in the magical lands of Gensokyo.

"Eiki and her don't do that, don't go there, ohhhh she can be so irritating, aren't I a Yokai? Isn't it my job to scare and hurt these stupid humans? But nooo…"

Really it wasn't her fault that these humans had been so stupid to come to her hill, and after all hadn't the shrine maiden jumped in before she could do anything… permanent. They should know better, shouldn't they, after all it was there own fault for leaving her alone letting her rot and hoping that she would break. That was the main opinion of the yokai girl known as Medicine Melancholy, now many people would see her as a danger for the general public and these people would be right. But she had never learnt that it was a bad thing to kill people, hurt them, poison them with all kind of toxic materials, to make it clear, humans had screwed themselves with her.

With an unhappy sigh she lay down on the ground, hoping to maybe find a bit distraction by looking at the clouds in the sky.

"Hmmm… Hmmm. Hmmm…." She hummed silently while doing not anything in particular, the smile on her face had slightly changed, not much abut it was now a bit similar to what a normal child would have on its face. The girl yokai was not a monster by any means, but she was also could not just be brushed off as a normal problem child or something like that.

Even while the girl was stopping to so much as look at her surroundings at all and was focusing her attention on the sky trying to find something to compare the forms the white shapes, someone was with her did not do that. That was a certain doll that was flying in small circles around her at the moment unmoving body.

This was not a normal doll but a magical being nobody was sure exactly why the doll yokai was followed by a small flying miniature version of herself 24 hours a day. Of course there were a number of theories, for example that this was her original body and the form you saw most of the time nothing more then a manifestation of her will. A thought given form or something like that, some thought she had left the doll and another small yokai had taken residence in the small item, even tough they had no idea why she would ever allow that.

If you searched for long enough you could find any number of possibilities, not that either of the two beings knew about these rumours. You see a side effect of being a dangerous near lunatic yokai was that you were not often invited to any kind of party. Whatever to go back to the story, the little doll version of Melancholy was now gaining altitude, if she did it out of boredom or for a serious reason was unknown. But it whatever else was the case, the puppet had found something interesting, still some distance away was a figure moving, the image was still a bit to far away to say anything specific but who or whatever that was, it seemed to like the colour red.

The little animated toy was tilting its head in curiosity. "…." You could hear a quiet sound almost inaudible even in a place as silent as this one. It was then that it decided to turn around to inform its master? Or was there relationship more like these of comrades, or maybe friends? But that was not of any importance, much more interesting was the way the doll decided to inform Melancholy of the unknown being. It grabbed the bigger yokai with its tiny arms and attempted to nonchalantly carry her away, and it worked proving that whatever kind of being the doll may be. It had much more physical (or maybe magical) power than its form suggested.

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><p>I have never before written a fanfiction story but thought about it for some time and wondered who I could take... I have not checked the text out in any special way so please forgive me any failure. About the character I used, of all the individuals from FateStay Night there are some who stick out more then the others, one of them is the Archer from the Fate Route. In a way I think he is one of the greatest secrets the story contains. At least that is what I think, why did he decide to not kill his younger self in the end even tough the other two did (or at least tried) to do so (in HF route until he gave up on his ideals). Has he just not lost the will to go on, or was his own timeline different in some way? There are many possibilities you could think about without even changing any of the things we know more or less for sure.

In addition, if you find any loopholes one of this three are reasons is the right one:

A Wizard did it!

Parallel Universe

A Wizard from a Parallel Universe did it


	2. Meeting

And here is again the disclaimer, I don't own anything here except the general plot of the story and maybe an OC or two, I may throw in for spice at some point if I feel like it.

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><p>"Sigh!"<p>

The old man looked down onto a little chest, he had laid some surprises for the boy inside of it. But it had exhausted him a bit more then he expected to make these little presents, another proof that slowly his age was catching up.

But what worth would there be in life if he didn't have a bit fun, the smile in face became bigger when he took out a big dagger or very short sword from one of his pockets.

It looked fairly unusual, as if made from countless crystals and reflecting any light into a kaleidoscope of colours. He held it up, and made a cutting movement at the chest with it, a bright light shone for a few seconds, then the wooden chest had vanished.

The jewel sword a item created by Zelretch himself, while the copies that are created from time to time can only absorb energy from parallel worlds and use these for something, he uses the original also as a tool for transportation into different worlds.

"So now I just have to wait until you find my little presents."

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><p>The young man was wandering across some small hills that were covered with countless flowers. He had no idea what kind they were but they had a calming effect on him even tough he didn't notice that.<p>

Until now he had been concentrated on the next steps he wanted to achieve. But now he had finally found the time and especially concentration to think about some other things. One of the main questions he had to ask himself was, how the hell could he even exist here?

He was a Servant or to be more specific a heroic spirit, a being created from the soul of a long dead person who became so famous that he achieved a semi divine status. Now normally such an entity would need a constant supply of prana, also known as magical energy by these ignorant of magecraft and its capabilities or would vanish the moment its reserves would drop to zero.

Of course there were different ways to get the needed energy, a heroic spirit would either get its power from a higher entity with which it had a contract or from a living being that somehow managed to summon him.

After the initial summoning a heroic spirit could also go and absorb the "soul" or magical power of humans, preferably such with talent in thaumaturgy but that would still take either a being or person to first summon the spirit.

He had already some time ago noted that there was no link to a summoner that would supply him with the needed energy.

"So where do I get my power from? When I looked last I didn't have any prana batteries in my pockets."

Sure, there was the chance that a summoner waited for something to happen before he or she would appear, but no matter how precise he scanned his surroundings he couldn't find anything even remotely like a connection to a person.

"But my reserves are good, that is very odd." Good they were not at 100 % but they had still grown some.

But what if he was approaching the matter just false?

He changed his strategy and tried again, this time not searching for a certain thing and only sending his supernatural senses our in the immediate environment and he was rewarded.

"What the Hell!" His voice boomed over the flower fields as he shouted out.

Only moments later he tried to again take control of his temper, he was normally a very prudent and level headed person, but this was not a situation he was used to, thrown into unknown territory, without any information.

He had to think, it was impossible there could never be such a level of latent magical energy in the air, but his senses were indubitably picking up a crazy amount of prana directly above his skin.

The density of this places magical energy was ridiculous, like being inside of magical artefact or something like that. That was insane the normal amount of prana in any place he had ever seen or heard off would not even be worth talking about, at least from the viewpoint of a heroic spirit.

He tried to see the things in a positive light, at least now he knew what was giving him the needed magical energy, and there were not many persons who could pull something like that off.

Indeed he could count the persons he knew that were in able to do something like this with the fingers of his two hands.

There was Zelretch, but if that man was the culprit he would probably never be in able to know for sure, Crimson Moon the creator of the true Ancestors, maybe some other sorcerer, Rin and Luvia were also possibilities if they had enough time to learn from the old man.

Of course it could also be that Alaya the will of humanity or Gaia the will of the earth had decided that he should now receive some kind of sick punishment.

Then there were… now that he thought about it he knew way more beings with idiotic amounts of power and/or skill then he was feeling comfortable with.

He was about to estimate how many resources it would take to pull of something like this as a prank (he wasn't excluding this possibility with someone like Zelretch as possible culprit) when something happened.

A surprised shriek could be heard and shortly thereafter the sound of the impact of something on the earth.

He cursed loudly his failure to not keep the area in mind while thinking about something else as he turned around.

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><p>"Ahhh… Suzu what do you think you are doing?"<p>

The doll in question either didn't think anything in particular, didn't care about the girl's question or had simply no way to inform the other about her judgement of things.

Whatever the correct answer would have been, we will never hear it as this story progressed by the small yokai girl noticing why exactly she had been lifted into the air like a sack filled with potatoes.

"Ohhh…" Her mouth opened slightly as she noticed the humanoid shape that was now close enough so that she could recognize some details.

Of course she was slightly surprised; after all there were not many people that would come here, with exception of those who hadn't much choice in the matter.

The aim of her interest was a very big man almost two meters in size, appearing like he was somewhere between 20 and 30. He was wearing a long crimson jacket with something like black leather armour and pants beneath them.

But what would really make him stick out of a group even in casual clothes were the spiky hair that was white, not grey like in old age, but pure white like freshly fallen snow.

He was a human.

That much she knew for sure, even tough she had no idea how she knew it, probably some kind of yokai instinct.

Whatever, that didn't change the fact, he was human.

A wicked smile bloomed on her face, finally she had something to kill some time.

Good, the most humans wouldn't put a good fight on, but even if he were to lose consciousness immediately, she could still experiment on his body with some of her new poisons.

Oh the joys of having a toy.

The man at least looked capable enough to not drop dead at the first hit, or so she hoped. Whatever she would see soon enough, wouldn't she?

Her thoughts were interrupted by the voice of the human, he loudly cursed, really how impolite, she wouldn't feel bad about poisoning him at all, not that she would have felt bad about it anyway.

He seemed to be deep in his own thoughts and so the girl had, now that she thought about it, for the first time the opportunity to study a human who didn't scream, tried to run away, or shoots Danmaku bullets at her.

She had not much experience with humans, but what she had, showed her three pictures, the first was as following. Normal humans were weaklings that could only scream, run away and curse others for there misfortune.

Shrine Maidens on the other hand would defend the first type of human, which was from her perspective somehow stupid and were in able to not only defend themselves but also kick a very great amount of ass.

Witches were pretty much the same, maybe not as powerful but much easier to anger then the first kind, especially if you make fun of their hats. Oh and you had to be careful if they had brooms, never, ever let them out of your sight.

The two last groups had one thing in common, they were all female, so in her mind, being male, was pretty much they same, as being cannon fodder.

At this point of her inner musings she noticed a light shaking and looked up to the doll holding her above ground. Named item had noticed a butterfly and seemed to be enchanted by it, as far as a doll can be enchanted at least.

Her eyes widened as she said. "You wouldn't dare to…"

She didn't get any further with her sentence as the doll decided that following the insect was the more interesting activity.

A single shriek was heard and the girl fell to the ground, not from very high mind you, but still, it wasn't pleasant for her.

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><p>Two very different figures were facing each other, one of them was slowly rubbing his eyes, had he really seen right? There had been a small flying figure, hadn't there? He wasn't absolutely sure, unsure he redirected his attention to the girl in front of him.<p>

This girl had just now remembered that she could fly, why she couldn't remember something like that sooner was a mystery to her. Unhappily she raised herself from the ground.

Then they both blinked and opened there mouths slightly, and in an impressive example of synchronicity tried to talk at the exact same time.

"Are you okay?" - "Stop staring at me!"

Both of them talked very fast and not very comprehensible, so it was not very surprising that both couldn't understand what the other had said.

As if the whole thing weren't embarrassing enough, now Melancholy had no idea what to do, it has been said a few times by now, but for all these who forgot. Medicine Melancholy had not many friends and was very bad with social activities.

At first she had just said what came to her mind, but now that she actually thought about it her brain seemed to go into overdrive while searching for the right words.

The young man also had some problems, how should he call himself? Maybe he could give his real name? No too risky, even if they didn't know him in this time or place, his old man had been too… famous.

So maybe his class? That could work, even tough he had theoretically not been summoned to the holy grail war. The only thing that troubled him a bit was how the girl looked, she was blond and her clothes just screamed European. She would think the name was weird, or maybe not even understand Japanese…

He didn't notice the uncertain expression on the face of the girl as he talked.

"Hello, I am Archer… are you okay?"

The girl blinked, the words seemed to bring her out of something and her mouth opened.

"Protoanemonin causes indigestion, symptoms of aconitine are hypothermia, paralysis of the heart and death, convallatoxin causes Heart rhythm disturbances, nicotine…"

Now it was Archers turn to blink a couple of times, he had expected a number of things, for example that she wouldn't understand him. Ask him for a real name or something similar, but to start list... he was not sure what theme her listing had, but it seemed to have one.

That was weird, even by his standards.

His decision came fast, he would grab the girl and shake her some, so she could come out of, whatever it was she was in.

Hands seized the body of the girl and he began his plan while doing his best to make the girl notice his presence again.

And it worked, she looked at him, wide eyes and behind them lay something, as if the girl had made a decision herself this time.

He let her go and stepped back, but he felt a bit unusual, and for some reason his hand itched.

The girl pointed with her palms at him.

"Thanks for your help, now I can do what I had planed for you."

At this very moment all alert signs in Archers head lit up like a beacon and he jumped back as dozens of energy spheres that seemed to come out of nowhere started to fly at him.

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><p>Melancholy studied the movement of her opponent, he was good…<p>

That was the only way she could call it, he seemed to naturally know how he needed to move to dodge her Danmaku barricade. Not that she was shooting very seriously, only a few smaller bullets to knock him out, after all he had touched her, so he was already doomed.

It was her failure, she had become too nervous and she would surely hear a pretty big lecture from Shikieiki, for killing a human here, good she had planned to play with him, but not outright kill him, at least not here where she couldn't hide the corpse anywhere.

But something was not as it should be…

The human was not becoming slower, indeed he moved with a much higher speed than a member of his species should be in able to.

In addition he seemed to follow a pattern with his evasive manoeuvres, she noticed it only after a few minutes had already gone by.

She looked curious, he had found himself on one of the hills, and partly behind a rather big rock, a few of the energy bullet bounced off the rock.

Her eyes opened wider as something in the hands of the man began to glow, was he maybe trying do distract her with a smoke bomb, that wouldn't work, another one had tried that before, she drove the memory away that showed that this certain person got away at that time and resumed to her observation.

And dodging a giant red energy beam by hair's breadth, she blinked wildly trying to understand what happened, the aim had not been the best but that was a big laser.

She looked down at the human, he had a bow in his hands now, he had pulled the bowstring already back, a very wicked looking and luminous arrow held straight.

For the first time the little yokai girl wondered if she hadn't maybe chosen the false target for her latest little fun.

The man ignored the disbelieving look that was thrown at him and shot.

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><p>First thanks for the nice reviews; I had not really expected any for my first try.<p>

Story Reader 97: First I believed you meant some kind of rule for the site and erased the part, only a bit later I found out what it really means…

Vanishing Trooper: I am going to try to make it as easy to write as I can, but sometimes it is hard to do that, whatever I will try.

EVA-Saiyajin: Don't give me too many compliments or I may become conceited

Notes: Suzu is the name I have given to the doll that follows Medicine, after the poisonous flowers that grow on the hill on which she lives the Suzuran or in English Lily of the Valley. Also, I had since the beginning thought about the problem with the prana reserves and then thought a bit. Gensokyo was created as a save haven for magical creatures after humans and yokai started to fight too much. I also read in a number of fics that the magical energy has weakened in the normal world over time. So I believed that the great Hakurei Border somehow absorbs energy from the outside and then creates a cycle. Of course over years the density of magical energy would shoot much higher then it was before in any normal place of the world. I don't know exactly what of these is canon, however this luckily makes Archer independent from a source of energy in form of a master.


End file.
